The top 1% of U.S. population now make 23% of income. (& top 10% of the U.S. population make 50% of income).
Is this because we live in a winner take all economy???
The top 1% of U.S. population now make 23% of income. (& top 10% of the U.S. population make 50% of income).
Is this because we live in a winner take all economy???
I believe the top earners have at their disposal tools that help them multiply. Access to the Internet is one big multiplier that provides lots of information that allows earners to earn more.
The key as I see it is education. While not available to 100% of Americans, I believe education is available to more than 95% of Americans. Seeing the advantage of education seems to be another advantage of top earners. They ensure that their kids get an education.
Dwayne, disagree access to education is biggest factor. Access to adversity helped me more than formal education.
We don’t have a winner take all economy. I’ll take Warren Buffet’s great car insurance or Dairy Queen blizzard, and he can go take the money and figure out other great things to build with it. Everyone wins.
And in fact the lowest skilled win the most, because these products enable them to do things they could not have before.
It is short-term profit, long-term loss thinking to look at selective wealth building at the expense of the lower end of the economic ladder as a good thing for anyone. It is the more advanced and enlightened human being, the true follower of God, who has empathy and concern for others, but even at the basic level of evolution and species survival, if you starve all the chad, even the sharks will die.
I personally hope (and am heading this way) my business prospers so much that I am in a high tax bracket. When I was a child, I was taught that money doesn’t grow on trees. It doesn’t come from my hard, smart work, either… the money I make comes from my customers and clients. According to a documentary I just watched, the country of Buton has a gross national product, set by its government which it calls “Gross National Happiness”. Happiness for ALL its people is the prime directive. And by the faces and interviews of the Butanese people, it is succeeding.
Perhaps if we were to be so enlightened, we wouldn’t worry about mandating a national health plan or establishing protective regulations and tax structures to balance our growing income disparity, which could lead to the kind of wholeness in our culture that would be our best defense against terrorism, economic collapse, physical/mental/spiritual sickness and … unhappiness.